Golden Key 5K Gets SunSmart Run/WalkUM's chapter of the Golden Key International Honour Society is hosting the Golden Key 5K Gets SunSmart Run/Walk on Saturday, April 23 at Crandon Park South on Key Biscayne to support Melanoma research and AED heart device installations in public areas. UM students get a discounted rate of $15 if they register online at www.goldenkey5k.com (non-students: $20 online, $25 day-of). The price includes a T-shirt. UM dermatologists will be at the event to give free skin cancer screenings, and prizes will be given to the top finishers in each age group. If you are interested in volunteering or need a ride, please email info@goldenkey5k.com.

Wellness Education Series The Herbert Wellness Center is proud to promote healthy living by offering a series of programs on various topics, ranging from fitness and nutrition to stress management. The wellness education series is open to everybody, regardless of membership status. Registration is required prior to participation in any of the programs. Visit the Wellness Enrichment Suite or call 305-284-LIFE(5433) to reserve your place. Click here for the full schedule. Here are some of our upcoming programs in the series:

Meditation Classes - The Jewels of HappinessFriday, April 22, 7:30 p.m. - 9 p.m. Relax and unwind as you learn to meditate. You'll develop mental clarity and discipline, as well as enhance creativity and inner peace in your pursuit of personal satisfaction. Brought to you by Sri Chinmoy Centres International, classes are free and open to students, employees, and the community.

Basic Life Support (BLS) for Healthcare Providers (HCP) Monday, May 2, 9 a.m. - 12 p.m., Classrooms. The BLS for HCP course covers core materials such as adult and pediatric CPR (including two-rescuer scenarios and use of the bag mask), foreign-body airway obstruction, and automated external defibrillation. This course is for healthcare providers such as EMS personnel, physician assistants, doctors, dentists, nurses, and respiratory therapists who must have a credential card documenting successful completion of a CPR course. Cost: student members - $45, non-student members - $55, non-members - $65.

Cooking Class - Stand-Out SaladsWednesday, April 27, 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m., Chef Mercedes, Instructional Kitchen. Side dish, appetizer, main course, and dessert - salads can do it all. Apple, Pear, and Cucumber Salad turns ordinary ingredients into an extraordinarily simple, delectable salad. Watermelon, Feta, and Arugula Salad with Watermelon Vinaigrette will impress your guests from the mention of the title through their last bite. Le Puy lentils bathe in dressing before joining the rest of the Mediterranean Lentil Salad ingredients, making this salad built in reverse order! Maple-Glazed Salmon Salad delivers triple learning points - glazed salmon, a flexible Asian dressing, and a different combination of salad ingredients than your day-to-day choices. Cost (including demonstration, recipes, and food tasting): student and non-student members - $20, non-members - $25.

Parking InformationPlease note that the BankUnited North, VIP, and Serpentine Lots may be closed for the following events:

April 16 - 27: Telemundo Load-In

April 28: Latin Billboard Award Show at 8 p.m.*

* Please be advised that the North lot, located behind the BankUnited Center, will be closed from now until April 28 in order to accommodate this event.

For more specific parking information, please visit the Parking bulletin board to the right of the Herbert Wellness Center exit gates.

Tips for a Healthier

Health-E-Cooking: Orange Chicken Salad with FetaTrying to eat healthier but getting sick of grilled chicken and steamed broccoli? Change up your boring salad routine with this recipe for Orange Chicken Salad with Feta:

Enjoy a summer salad with this cool, citrus dressing. Oranges are high in Vitamin C, adding a vitamin boost to a basic salad

Prepare grill. Place chicken on a grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 6 minutes on each side or until done. Cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices. Set aside.
Combine lettuce and next 5 ingredients (through onions) in a large bowl. Combine orange juice concentrate, vinegar, oil, salt, and black pepper; stir with a whisk. Pour juice mixture over lettuce mixture, tossing to coat. Divide lettuce mixture evenly among 4 plates; top evenly with chicken, oranges, and almonds.

Jumpstart Your RoutineDoes your exercise routine need a swift kick in the gluteus maximus? It's easy to get bored with the same old exercises every day.

This semester we will build on the basic exercises we featured last semester. Combining different movements in the same exercises increases caloric expenditure and allows you to accomplish more with less time. This issue's exercise is the quadruped:

Step 1: Kneel on all fours. Inhale in preparation. As you exhale, activate your core by drawing your navel to your spine. Important: you should be able to do this without moving your spine. Check to see if your weight is evenly distributed over the hands and knees. If possible, work in front of a mirror. Also, your shoulders should be relaxed.

Step 2: Inhale to prepare. As you exhale, simultaneously extend your right leg and your left arm. Inhale to return.

Step 3: Exhale, and extend your left leg and right arm. Inhale to return.

Ask a Trainer Have a question you'd like answered by a personal trainer? We're here to help.

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Q: I have poor posture but I exercise consistently. Someone recently told me I may have kyphosis. Should I be concerned?

A: Unless this causes extreme pain, you should not immediately run to the chiropractor. If you are unfamiliar with the term, kyphosis literally means a rounding of the back. A number of things can lead to kyphosis including trauma, endocrine diseases, and possibly fractures caused by osteoporosis. A common theme among people with bad posture is a weak core. The core includes the musculature of the abdominals, low back, and hips. The core is like the trunk of a tree. If a tree has big strong branches but a weak trunk, the tree is eventually going to collapse. Similarly, if a person has big strong muscles but a weak core, the person will eventually get injured due to postural imbalances. The body constantly undergoes changes; neither the development of, nor correction for bad posture will occur overnight. Corrective exercises will eventually elicit positive changes. Remember, just because you cannot “feel” an exercise, it does not mean the exercise is not working.
Here are a few hints to improve posture. In exercises where you are on all-fours or bent over at the hip, picture an imaginary line being pulled up through your belly button that keeps the integrity of the low back. Another rule of thumb is to equally exercise contrasting muscles. For example, if someone continually works out his/her chest, but neglects the back eventually it will show. The strengthening of the chest muscles might make them tight, compound that with a weak back and posture could suffer.

Did You Know?Interested in science-based fitness facts? Our resident exercise physiologist and associate director of fitness, will share fitness and nutrition information that is fact, not fiction.

Exercise is not only good for preventing heart attacks, but it also prevents undesirable outcomes after a heart attack. A new study shows prolonged exercise is the key to the best outcomes after a heart attack. The study found that patients who began an exercise program one week after their heart attack were found to have improved “heart performance” when compared to those who waited to begin their rehabilitation program. In fact, the results showed that for every week that a patient delayed their exercise treatment, they would have to train for the equivalent of one month longer to get similar benefits.

In the News

Has life just been too busy to read the Health and Fitness section of your newspaper? Let us provide you with a few highlights of what's made the news lately.

Sleep Deprivation Spurs HungerSleep deprivation can leave you feeling drowsy and slow-witted, but that's not all: new research suggests it may also rev up your appetite. After sleeping for only four hours, people tend to eat more calories on the following day than when they get a good night's sleep, the study found. This was especially true of women, who consumed an average of 329 more calories when sleep deprived than when well rested. By contrast, men consumed just 263 more. These findings may explain the link between insufficient sleep and overweight that has been shown in previous studies, says the lead researcher, Marie-Pierre St. Onge, Ph.D., a research associate at Columbia University's New York Obesity Research Center. "This study shows a possible causative effect," she says.

Overweight people often have sleep problems - most notably sleep apnea, a breathing disorder that causes frequent awakenings - but it's not clear if they're overweight because of their sleep problems, or if their sleep problems result from being overweight. St. Onge's study may be a step toward answering that "chicken-or-the-egg question" because it included only people of normal weight and therefore eliminated the influence of existing overweight or obesity, says Gina Lundberg, M.D., a clinical assistant professor of cardiology at the Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta. However, Lundberg cautions that the study's small size makes it impossible to draw any firm conclusions. (She was not involved in the research.)

The study, which was presented recently at an American Heart Association conference in Atlanta, included 13 male and 13 female volunteers between the ages of 30 and 45, all of whom were healthy sleepers of normal weight. Each of the participants spent two six-day stints under close supervision in a sleep lab. During the first stint they could sleep up to nine hours per night, and during the other they were restricted to just four hours. They were not allowed to leave the lab, nor were they allowed to nap.

For the first four days of the study, they all ate a fixed diet of cereal and milk in the morning and frozen entrées for lunch and dinner. Then, on the last two days of the study, they could choose what they ate. They were given an allowance and taken shopping, the only restriction being that they had to buy food with clearly marked nutritional content so the researchers could properly measure it.

In addition to consuming more calories, the volunteers seemed to gravitate to high-fat, high-protein foods when sleep deprived. "Ice cream was a favorite," St. Onge says. Both men and women ate more protein-rich foods on short sleep, but only women ate more fat. While men ate the same amount of fat no matter how much sleep they got, the women averaged 31 more grams of fat after sleeping for four hours.

The sleep-deprived participants may simply have been looking for a quick source of energy to perk themselves up, St. Onge says, but it could also be that lack of sleep impairs the ability to make healthy food choices. "It has an impact on cognitive restraint," she says. "High-fat food is tempting, and maybe on short sleep you can't restrain yourself as well, while on full sleep you can resist more easily."

The lack of restraint displayed by the sleep-deprived volunteers could have unhealthy consequences over the long term, Lundberg says. Regularly eating an extra 300 calories a day would add up to about 30 pounds of weight gain over the course of a year, increasing the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses associated with overweight and obesity, she says. The study offers "one more data point that sleep-deprived people have more weight issues," Lundberg adds. "And if we understand the problem better, we'll be better able to fix the problem."

St. Onge's study was presented at the American Heart Association's annual conference on nutrition, physical activity, and metabolism. Unlike the studies published in medical journals, the research presented at the meeting has not been thoroughly vetted by other experts in the field.